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Mets add Paul Sewald to 25-man roster

A 12-inning game, an early exit for Zack Wheeler and a rare April stretch of 12 games without a day off had the Mets reaching for extra relief help. After Friday’s game against the Marlins, the Mets added Paul Sewald to the roster. To make room for Sewald, they designated Ty Kelly for assignment.

Sewald, ranked 28th on my top 50 list, has done well in the upper level of the minors, as well as this year in Grapefruit League play. He’s earned comparisons to Addison Reed, in his ability to pitch above his stuff. He’s worked out with Greg Maddux in the offseason and hopefully has picked up a few tricks from the Hall of Famer.

Kelly made the Opening Day roster despite not being on the 40-man roster heading into camp. The Mets made room for him when Jeurys Familia was placed on the restricted list for his 15-game suspension. Kelly’s spot was going to be in jeopardy once Familia was eligible for reinstatement. Now Sewald may be on the hot seat.

If David Wright is moved to the 60-day DL, that could open the necessary roster spot when Familia returns.

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6 comments for “Mets add Paul Sewald to 25-man roster”

TexasGusCC

April 8, 2017 at 12:15 pm

One the topic of relief pitchers, the MLBPA needs to find a way to get that rule of facing one batter changed. That rule was put in when bullpens were only six deep at most. Now, they are eight and often nine deep and the rule is outdated. Managers treat relievers like a baby treats a diaper and it hurts careers. MLB was looking into making it a three batter minimum or maybe an inning for pace of play purposes. However, such a change also would force managers to truly “manage” the usage of each pitcher and not burn them out.

I haven’t seen a single game yet this year nor paid attention to a box score, so I cannot speak to Collins’ use, but it seems over the years all managers make several changes per inning and if a pitcher throws just a third of an inning three days in a row, all that warming up resulted into one total inning. That’s a joke. Warmup pitches count too.

Old school managers used to manage warm-up pitches and how many times a guy warmed up. I don’t recall a single one worrying more than that about a relievers arm. Once in a while you hear the phrase “wasting him in the bullpen” and that has to do with warming up a guy so many times that you used up much of his availability.

Brian, rather than wait for the manager that will care more about his relievers’ good than his own performance to that extent, MLB should see the obvious problem here and fix it. Seems like only a lawsuit will catch their attention, huh?

And they went to the World Series last year. Matt Cerrone was talking about using Lugo in a similar way to how the Indians use Miller. Thought it was a pipe dream, just based on our management team. But if nothing else it’s a recognition from a pretty mainstream source that the current bullpen model is not optimized.